TUCKED INTO THE American Rescue Plan — the coronavirus stimulus that passed in early March — is the greatest victory for American workers in recent memory: the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act. The law constitutes a massive rescue for the 10 million members and retirees of oft-underfunded labor-management multiemployer pension funds, which in recent years have threatened dramatic cuts for hundreds of thousands of pensioners and reduced, sometimes substantially, the benefits of tens of thousands.
Now those 10 million workers will see their benefits protected for, at minimum, the next 30 years. Pension funds that had already cut benefits for their members will pay back workers the amount that they were cut, with some retirees expecting checks in excess of $15,000. The result is an affirmation of the right to a secure retirement, arguably the biggest win for labor in Congress since the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993.
